Charles Leslie Stevenson

Charles Leslie Stevenson (1908–1979) was a mid-Twentieth
Century American philosopher best known for his pioneering work in the
field of metaethics (the study of the relations among moral language,
thought, reality, and knowledge) and, specifically, as a central
figure along with I. A. Richards and A. J. Ayer in the development of
emotivism. Emotivism, a precursor to the metaethical expressivism
today championed by Simon Blackburn (1984, 1993) and Alan Gibbard
(1990, 2003) among others, is typically understood as a theory of
moral language according to which ethical terms are used much like
exclamative and imperative sentences (‘Hooray!’, ‘Be
kind’) to express a speaker's affective, noncognitive
psychological states, such as approval or disapproval, rather than to
describe (or in addition to describing) some action, person,
institution, etc. Stevenson's emotivism, however, was more than a
theory of moral language. Rather, it was but one part of a full-blown
ethical theory, grounded in moral and linguistic psychology, which was
intended to clarify the nature and structure of a whole range of
normative problems common to everyday life—ethical, aesthetic,
economic, legal, political, etc.—as well as the methods
typically used to resolve them. Throughout his work, Stevenson is
respectful of the complexity of human experience and the power of
signs and sounds to move a person emotionally and
behaviorally. Correspondingly, he is impatient with simplistic answers
to complex problems, the postulation of entities unverifiable by
scientific methods (e.g., non-naturalistic moral properties), and the
quest for exceptionless “first principles” of explanation
and justification that can be known with certainty.

In this entry, the words ‘ethics’ and
‘morality’ and their cognates, such as
‘ethical’ or ‘moral’, are used
interchangeably.

C. L. Stevenson was born in 1908 in Cincinnati, Ohio. In his
youth, he developed a life-long passion for literature and the arts,
especially poetry and music, whose power to influence a person's
emotions and actions fascinated him—a fascination that would remain at
the center of Stevenson's personal and professional life.

In 1926, Stevenson entered Yale University, earning a prize for best
entrance examination for piano at the Yale School of Music. He
graduated from Yale in 1930 with a BA in English Literature, a field he
intended to pursue upon entering Cambridge University, England later
that year. While at Cambridge, however, Stevenson became
increasingly attracted to philosophy, in large part because of
acquaintances with I. A. Richards, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein. Each of these figures produced important, and
different, kinds of work on the nature, analysis, and use of language,
had strong personalities, and shared Stevenson's love for literature,
arts, and aesthetics. Stevenson earned his BA in Philosophy from
Cambridge in 1933 and entered Harvard that same year to earn his PhD in
Philosophy, which he received in 1935. While at Harvard,
Stevenson worked closely with Ralph Barton Perry, whose General
Theory of Value (1926), conversant in early American pragmatism
and early Continental phenomenology, had a lasting influence on
Stevenson's work (Sartris 1984; Warnock 1978).

Stevenson remained at Harvard as an instructor for three years until
1938, during which time three early essays were published in
Mind: “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”
(1937), “Ethical Judgments and Avoidability” (1938a), and
“Persuasive Definitions” (1938b). In 1939, Stevenson
accepted the position of Assistant Professor at Yale, where he
remained until 1946, and during which time his landmark Ethics and
Language was published in 1944. One of the conclusions Stevenson
reached in this book was that some ethical disputes may be rationally
irresolvable and, thus, would be resolvable if at all only by
nonrational methods. Apparently on these grounds, and in the
historical context of World War II atrocity, Stevenson was denied
tenure.[1] The
University of Michigan immediately offered Stevenson a position as
Associate Professor, which he accepted, and where he remained until
1978. During his thirty-one year career at Michigan, Stevenson
published scores of articles in ethics and aesthetics. The most
important of his ethics articles are collected in Facts and
Values (1963a), which also contains an informative retrospective
essay (1963b) that clarifies, expands, and refines his mature ethical
theory. His closely related work in aesthetics remains uncollected.

Stevenson passed away in 1979 in Bennington, Vermont, where he had
moved to be near family and where he had accepted a position as
Professor of Philosophy at Bennington College. He was survived by
his second wife Nora, whom he married in 1965, after the death, two
years earlier, of his first wife, Louise. With Louise, Stevenson
had three children, including acclaimed poet Anne Stevenson.

For Stevenson, a field of study is demarcated by the kinds of
problems into which it inquires. Biology inquires into problems
concerning life; history inquires into problems concerning past social
events and cultural developments; etc. Ethics inquires into
ethical problems, problems about what is good or bad, what ought or
ought not be done, how we ought or ought not feel about something,
etc. Ethical problems are ubiquitous. They are the
“problems that are familiar in everyday discussions, and which range
from idle bits of gossip about this or that man's character to
prolonged and serious discussions of international politics” (1963a,
v). Stevenson conceives of his work as having “far less to say
about the summum bonum of the philosophers than about the
judgments of the ordinary man as he finishes reading the morning's
newspaper” (1963a, v).

Stevenson viewed normative ethics—the branch of ethics which
seeks to resolve ethical problems in a systematic, rigorous
way—as the most important branch of ethics (e.g., 1944, 1 and
336). But he also viewed normative ethics as having long been an
embarrassment owing to its practitioners' stubborn, “age old
quest” for foundational, exceptionless moral principles that
could be known with certainty (1944, 336; 1961–62a,
97–106). The quest for such principles, whether general
(“Produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number,”
“Treat people always as ends in themselves”) or more
specific (“Thou shall not lie”), was futile in Stevenson's
view; but worse, it was injurious, because it ignored the complexity
of moral issues and, thus, issued forth inflexible norms unsuitable
for resolving the complex moral problems of modern life (1944, 336;
1961–62a, 116). What normative ethics needed most, according to
Stevenson, was clarity about the nature of moral problems. For if the
nature of moral problems were more transparent, so too might be more
effective means of resolving them—that is, more effective
“methodology.” In particular, the role, if any, of
scientific methods in resolving moral problems would be more
transparent.

The nature of moral problems, according to Stevenson, lies in the
subjective experiences of those engaged in interpersonal moral
disagreement and intrapersonal moral uncertainty. He viewed this
area of moral psychology—the subjective experience of moral
disagreement and uncertainty—as the most underappreciated area of
ethics and the key to making progress on the important, normative
questions of ethics:

[Dealing adequately with the nature of ethical problems] requires us
to abstract from the detailed subject matter of the problems and pay
selective attention to the aspects of them that are most likely to prod
us into problem solving. It requires us to see these aspects not
from a moral point of view (which would attend any attempt to settle
the problems) but rather from the point of view of an informal, common
sense psychology. In effect, then, it asks for a generic
description, given in psychological terms, of those ethical doubts and
uncertainties, or discords and disagreements, that we often resolve by
inquiry, deliberation, and discussion, but which on some occasions can
lead us into an impasse, and on other occasions can induce us
temporarily to suspend judgment, acknowledging that we are not yet in a
position to come to a trustworthy conclusion. (1963b, 186–187)

That Stevenson intentionally develops his entire ethical theory
around an “informal, common-sense psychology” is a point
missed by many commentators, who misconceive Stevenson's ethical
theory merely as a “development” of Ayer's comparatively
thin emotive theory. Warnock, for example, apparently conceiving of
Stevenson's Ethics and Language simply as a development of a
theory of moral language, writes that “it is as if Stevenson had
become over self-conscious about methodology and there is a good deal
of reflexive commenting upon his own procedures, which add little or
nothing to the actual ethical theory” (Warnock 1978, p. 66). But
as we'll see below, Stevenson focuses on methodology and procedure
precisely because he aims to describe in some detail how language is
and can be used to resolve interpersonal moral disagreement and
intrapersonal moral uncertainty.

Thus, although normative questions constitute for Stevenson the most
important branch of ethics, “pervading all of common-sense life, and
occupying most of the professional attention of legislators,
editorialists, didactic novelists, clergymen, and moral philosophers,”
his work focused on questions of moral psychology, judgment,
disagreement, uncertainty, language, and deliberation, thereby
contributing to the early development of that branch of ethics now
known as metaethics, and thus, on the “limited task of sharpening the
tools others employ” (1944, 1).

For Stevenson, then, the study of ethics is the study of moral
problems. Normative ethics concerns the resolution of actual moral
problems, while “analytical” or “meta” ethics
concerns the nature or general features of those problems. Stevenson
plausibly assumes that if we ultimately want better resolutions to
ethical problems, we should begin in metaethics by gaining clarity
about the general features of those problems. For as we gain clarity
about their general features, we gain clarity about the function of
moral language—about how moral problems arise and are dealt with
in our lives as social, communicative beings—clarity about the
methods that are and can be used to effectively resolve those
problems, and clarity about whether those methods are distinct from
the methods of science.

Moral problems can be interpersonal or personal. Problems are
interpersonal when there is disagreement between or among two or more
people and personal when an individual is uncertain. But what is the
nature of this disagreement or uncertainty? This is the
question around which Stevenson organizes all of his work in ethical
theory and with which he begins both Ethics and Language
(1944) and Facts and Values (1963a).

Interpersonal disagreement is of two broad kinds: disagreement in
belief and disagreement in attitude. Disagreement in belief
occurs when two or more people have beliefs that cannot all be true and
“neither is content to let the belief of the other remain unchallenged”
(1948b, 1), that is, when at least one party desires, needs, or
attempts to coordinate, or make consistent, those beliefs. If
Smith believes that his and Jones's anniversary is in June, while Jones
believes their anniversary is in July, their respective beliefs are
incompatible, since they cannot both be true; but Smith and Jones
disagree in Stevenson's sense only when—because there would likely be
a practical coordination problem only when—either or both desire,
need, or attempt to coordinate their beliefs, perhaps because they
would like to celebrate their anniversary as close to their wedding
date as possible. Their disagreement would be resolved when Smith
or Jones (or both) modify their beliefs in ways that make them
compatible (e.g., they both come to believe that their anniversary is in
June), or when both cease to care about coordinating their incompatible
beliefs, perhaps because they no longer care when they celebrate their
anniversary. Personal uncertainty in belief occurs when an
individual is uncertain about what to believe about some event or
object yet desires or needs to settle on such a belief. For
example, Smith may not have any strong belief about whether Jones or
Rodriguez will be his next boss; but he would be personally uncertain,
in Stevenson's sense, about which will be his next boss only when he
desires to settle between these beliefs, perhaps because he has decided
to look for a new job were Jones to become his new boss. By
implication, interpersonal agreement in belief occurs when two or more
people have beliefs that can all be true or, if they cannot all be
true, have no desire, etc. for them to be so (1944, 4–5; 1950,
55–60). Personal “certainty” in belief occurs when an individual
has settled on, or ceases to care about, what to believe (see
especially 1963b, 191–194; 1950, 55–60).

Analogously, interpersonal disagreement in attitude occurs when two or
more people have attitudes or interests—i.e., desires, feelings,
attitudes, plans, intentions, or other affective psychological states
whose general nature is that of being for or being
against something (1948b, 2)—that cannot all be jointly satisfied
(had, felt, etc.) and there is a desire, need, or attempt to coordinate
those interests. If Smith and Jones desire to dine together, but
Smith desires to dine at a restaurant where there is music, while Jones
desires to dine at a quiet restaurant, they disagree, in a quite
ordinary sense of the term, about where to dine (1944, 3). This
kind of disagreement, as Stevenson notes, “springs more from divergent
preferences than from divergent beliefs, and will end when they both
wish to go the same place. It will be a mild, temporary
disagreement for this simple case—a disagreement in miniature;
yet it will be a ‘disagreement’ in a wholly familiar sense” (1944,
3). Indeed, for Stevenson, interpersonal disagreements in
attitude are not only unextraordinary, they are ubiquitous:

Further examples are easily found. Mrs. A has social aspirations, and
wants to move with the elite. Mr. A is easy-going, and loyal to his
old friends. They accordingly disagree about what guests they will
invite to their party. The curator of the museum wants to buy pictures
by contemporary artists; some of his advisors prefer the purchase of
old masters. They disagree. John's mother is concerned about the
dangers of playing football, and doesn't want him to play. John, even
though he agrees (in belief) about the dangers, wants to play anyhow.
Again, they disagree. (1944, 3)

Personal uncertainty in attitude occurs when an individual is
uncertain about how to feel or what to do about some object or event,
but desires to feel or do something appropriate with respect to that
object or event. For example, Smith may currently be neither for nor
against some particular legislation proposal, but desires to determine
whether he is for or against the proposal so he can vote
responsibly. By implication, interpersonal agreement in attitude
occurs when two or more people have attitudes that can all be jointly
satisfied or when there is no desire, etc. for them to be all
satisfied (1944, 4–5; 1950, 55–60), and personal
“certainty” in attitude occurs when an individual has
settled on, or has no desire to settle on, how to feel or what to do
about a particular object or event (1963b, 191–194; 1950,
55–60). Interpersonal disagreement and personal uncertainty in
belief and attitude thus differ essentially in that “the former
is concerned with how matters are truthfully to be described and
explained; the latter is concerned with how they are to be favored or
disfavored, and hence with how they are to be shaped by human
efforts” (1944, 4).

Since there can be agreement and disagreement with respect to beliefs
and attitudes, there are four possible combinations of agreement and
disagreement (1944, 6–7). Two people can agree in attitude but
disagree in belief. For example, two researchers may value and aim to
produce a cure for a particular disease, but disagree about whether a
proposed treatment would produce its cure. In this case, the two
researchers may come to disagree about whether to implement the
proposed treatment. Their disagreement would be grounded in
disagreement in belief, and ensuing discussion would likely focus on
coordinating their respective beliefs. Alternatively, two people may
agree in belief but disagree in attitude. Our two researchers, for
example, may agree that proposed treatments T1 and
T2 may produce a cure for diseases
D1 and D2 respectively, but
disagree about whether available but limited funding ought to be used
to cure D1 or D2 and, hence,
ought to be used to develop T1 or
T2. In this case, the two researchers may disagree
about whether to develop T1 or
T2. Their disagreement would be grounded in
disagreement in attitude, and ensuing discussion would likely focus on
coordinating their respective attitudes. And two people may disagree
both in belief and attitude, in which case disagreement would be
grounded in both, and two people may agree in both belief and
attitude, in which case there may be no disagreement.

Stevenson does not assume that interpersonal disagreement always
signals that one is intending to get another to changes her beliefs or
attitudes, to win the argument as it were. It may, and often is,
the case that one is open to having his or her own beliefs or attitudes
changed in the course of open-minded discussion or deliberation.
Thus neither disagreement in belief nor disagreement in attitude need
be an “occasion for forensic rivalry; it may be an occasion for an
interchange of aims, with a reciprocal influence that both parties find
to be beneficial” (1944, 4–5).

Given that beliefs and attitudes play a crucial organizing role in
Stevenson's full-blown emotivism, one is entitled to inquire about the
nature of these psychological states—what these respective attitudes
are. Stevenson provides a rather thin account of
the nature of various psychological states and, consequently, provides
little detail about the nature of belief and attitude. Part of
the reason for the lack of detail is their complexity. Stevenson
rejects the “antiquated school of thought” according to which beliefs
are “so many mental photographs, the product of a cognitive faculty,
whereas attitudes stand apart as the drives or forces of a totally
different faculty,” and, hence, adopts the view that beliefs and
attitudes are more alike than folk psychology suggests (1944, 7).
Rather, he accepts a dispositional theory of psychological states,
including of beliefs and attitudes, according to which these states are
distinguishable by their respective complex causal relations (1944,
7–8; 1950). More will be said about Stevenson's view of
dispositions in
Section 3.2.
Although Stevenson fails to provide a detailed account
of the nature of belief and attitude, he does think that these are
easily distinguishable in our daily experience and, thus, that there is
a distinction “certainly beyond any practical objection” (1944,
7). It is also beyond any practical objection that beliefs and
attitudes causally affect each other. Consider an onlooker who
witnesses a chess expert open weakly against a novice and wonders:

Does he make the move because he believes that it is a strong
one, or because out of charity to his opponent, he doesn't
want to make a strong one? The distinction here between a
belief and a want (attitude) is certainly beyond any practical
objection. One can imagine the expert, with constant beliefs about the
opening, using it or not in accordance with his changing desires to
win; or one can imagine him, with constant desires to win, using it or
not in accordance with his changing beliefs. If in imagining this
independent variation of the ‘causal factors’ involved one
is tempted to hypostatize either ‘belief’ or
‘attitude,’ the fault must be corrected not by dispensing
with the terms in favor of purely generic talk about action,
but rather by coming to understand the full complexity of reference
that lies behind the convenient simplicity of language. (1944,
7–8)

Thus, for Stevenson, beliefs and attitudes are different, yet causally
related. Attitudes may causally affect beliefs, as when people
wishfully believe that they will win the upcoming lottery or when
parties conjure beliefs about a pub's closing hours while desiring one
more beer at late night. Likewise, beliefs may causally affect
attitudes, as when employees begin to disapprove of their company CEO
because of their newly acquired beliefs concerning her exorbitant
compensation package. Often beliefs and attitudes affect each
other (1944, 5; 1950).

Are moral problems essentially disagreements or uncertainties in
belief, attitude, or both? And are moral judgments constituted by
beliefs, attitudes, or both? Stevenson asserts that moral
problems almost always involve both types of disagreement or
uncertainty (1944, 11; 1948b, 4). For example, consider an
ethical disagreement between a union representative and a company
representative over an increase in employee wages:

Such an argument clearly represents a disagreement in attitude. The
union is for higher wages; the company is against
them, and neither is content to let the other's attitude remain
unchanged. In addition to this disagreement in attitude, of
course, the argument may represent no little disagreement in
belief. Perhaps the parties disagree about how much the cost of living
has risen and how much the workers are suffering under the present
wage scale. Or perhaps they disagree about the company's earnings and
the extent to which the company could raise wages and still operate at
a profit. Like any typical ethical argument, then, this argument
involves both disagreement in attitude and disagreement in
belief. (1948b, 4)

However, although moral problems almost always involve both types
of disagreement or uncertainty, their distinguishing feature is
disagreement or uncertainty in attitude. In fact, moral disagreement
or uncertainty may sometimes involve only that in attitude. Stevenson
wields four arguments for this conclusion, three of which may be
called the “Internalist,” “Desirability,” and
“Generational Arguments.” The Internalist Argument is an
intuitive appeal to what is now often called “motivational
judgment internalism,” roughly, the view that there is a
necessary connection between one's moral judgments and motivational
states. Our actual moral judgments and disagreements, Stevenson
intuits, involve “something more than a disinterested
description, or a cold debate about whether [something] is already
approved, or when it spontaneously will be” (1944, 13; see also
1948b, 3–4). Reflection on possible moral judgments and
disagreements also leads Stevenson to the same intuitive
conclusion. Consider a person who is fully persuaded that what he did
was wrong and, for that very reason, is more in favor of doing it
again:

Temporarily puzzled to understand him, we shall be likely to
conclude, ‘This is his paradoxical way of abusing what he considers our
outworn moral conventions. He means to say that it is really all
right to do it, and that one ought to do it flagrantly in order to
discredit the many people who consider it wrong’. But
whatever we may make of his meaning (and there are several other
interpretations possible) we shall scarcely take seriously his
protestations of agreement. Were we not trying all along to make
him disapprove of his action? Would not his ethical agreement
with us require that he share our disfavor—that he agree with us
in attitude? (1944, 16–17)

The Desirability Argument appeals to an oft-leveled objection to J. S.
Mill's claim that the only proof that can be given that something is
desirable is that people actually desire it (Utilitarianism,
Ch. 4, para. 3). The objection is that Mill equivocates on
‘desirable’, which could mean either ‘capable of
being desired’, or ‘worthy of being desired’ (see,
for example, Moore, 1903, Section 40). If the former, then Mill's
claim is a truism and, hence, would rarely occasion any kind of
disagreement. If the latter, however, then Mill's claim is a
controversial moral claim. Would such a controversy be essentially
disagreement in belief or in attitude? Stevenson concludes that it
would be disagreement in attitude, again appealing to intuition:

The statement so far from being axiomatic becomes highly
controversial. And it becomes so for a reason that is
easily understood. ‘That which is desired is desirable’ is a
statement of the easy-going man who wishes to encourage people to leave
their present desires unchanged; and conversely, the statement, ‘That
which is desired is not desirable’ is characteristic of the stern
reformer, who seeks to alter or inhibit existing desires.
Statements about what is desirable, unlike those about what is desired,
serve not to describe attitudes, merely, but to intensify or alter
them. (1944, 17–18)

The Generational Argument is an argument from the best explanation
about the cause of the disparity of ethical views that often occur
between people of widely different generations, ethnic or racial
communities, and geographic locations. According Stevenson, the
disparity is adequately explained if ethical disagreement were
essentially disagreement in attitude, “for different temperaments,
social needs, and group pressures would more directly and urgently lead
these people to have opposed attitudes than it would lead them to have
opposed factual beliefs” (1944, 18).

Many today would find these three arguments controversial at best,
especially taken individually. The Internalist Argument is
controversial for at least two reasons. First, the upshot of the
thesis of motivational judgment internalism is that it would be
impossible to make moral judgments without being appropriately
motivated; for example, it would be impossible to genuinely think
that insulting others is wrong without being motivated at
least to some extent to avoid or prevent insults to others.
However, some claim that this implication is too strong, appealing
either to their own intuitions that genuine-but-nonmotivating moral
judgments are possible or to accepted standards of burden of proof
arguments, which are thought to place the burden on internalists to
argue for the impossibility of such judgments (Brink 1989;
Railton 1986; Shafer-Landau 2003; Svavarsdottir 1999, 2006). More
recent objections to motivational judgment internalism appeal to
empirical evidence from the neuro and cognitive sciences.
Although appeal to such evidence is itself controversial (e.g.,
Kauppinen 2008, Prinz 2006), some suggest that persons with certain
damaged or underdeveloped brain functions, perhaps including
psychopaths and sociopaths, actually make such genuine
judgments (e.g., Roskies 2003, 2005). A second controversy over
Stevenson's Internalist Argument is its assumption that beliefs are
motivationally inert, that is, that beliefs are insufficient by
themselves to generate motivating states and, therefore, that moral
judgments must be constituted at least in part by affective attitudes
(which are taken to be inherently moving). While some object to
the assumption itself, arguing that some beliefs are in fact inherently
motivating, or at least sufficient to generate motivating states (e.g.,
Dancy 1993, Scanlon 1998, Shafer-Landau 2003), others object to
Stevenson's inference from that assumption to the further conclusion
that moral judgments must be constituted at least in part by affective
attitudes (e.g., Railton 1986, Smith 1994). For in-depth but
accessible overviews of the issues surrounding moral judgment and
motivation, see the entries on
moral motivation
and
moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.

Stevenson's Desirability and Generational Arguments are also
controversial at best. The Desirability argument appears to
collapse into the Internalist Argument, for it is at bottom an appeal
to the internalist intuition that disagreement over whether something
is worthy of being desired is, essentially, disagreement in
attitude. Finally, Stevenson himself recognizes the relative
weakness of the Generational Argument, admitting that the disparity in
ethical views between individuals of different generations, etc. may
just as well be explained, for example, by disagreement in belief about
the qualities or consequences of certain actions, people, policies,
etc. (1944, 18).

Before turning to Stevenson's fourth argument, it is important to note
that these two theses—that moral judgments are essentially constituted
at least in part by attitudes and that moral disagreement is
essentially disagreement in attitude—are two of the features that made
Stevenson's theory novel for its time and that continue to be of
lasting importance. For although a number of other “interest”
theories had taken seriously the central role that attitudes play in
moral judgment and disagreement, these theories, according to
Stevenson, had erred in holding that moral judgments are essentially
beliefs about attitudes and, consequently, that moral
disagreement is essentially disagreement in belief (about
attitudes):

A long tradition of ethical theorists strongly suggest, whether
they always intend to or not, that the disagreement is one in
belief. Naturalistic theorists, for instance, identify an
ethical judgment with some sort of scientific statement, and so make
normative ethics a branch of science. Now a scientific argument
typically exemplifies disagreement in belief, and if an ethical
argument is simply a scientific one, then it too exemplifies
disagreement in belief. The usual naturalistic theories of ethics
that stress attitudes—such as those of Hume, Westermarck, Perry,
Richards, and so many others—stress disagreement in belief no
less than the rest. They imply, of course, that disagreement
about what is good is simply one sort of disagreement in
belief about attitudes; but we have seen that that is simply one
sort of disagreement in belief, and by no means the same as
disagreement in attitude. Analyses that stress
disagreement in attitude are extremely rare. (1948b, 3; see also 1944,
9–10)

These theses also continue to motivate current day expressivists, such
Blackburn (1984, 1993) and Gibbard (1990, 2003).

Stevenson's fourth argument for the view that moral disagreement
essentially involves disagreement in attitude relies on the
“conspicuous role” that disagreement in attitude plays in
unifying moral disagreements; hence, this argument may be
called the “Unification Argument.” According to Stevenson,
disagreement in attitude imposes a “characteristic type or
organization” on the beliefs that could serve to resolve moral
disagreement, and, therefore, is that which most distinguishes ethical
issues from scientific issues (1944, 13; see also 1948b, 4).
Disagreement in attitude unifies moral disagreement in at least two
ways. First, disagreement in attitude determines which beliefs
are relevant to ethical deliberation, for “any belief that is
introduced into the argument must be one that is likely to lead one
side or the other to have a different attitude …. But
beliefs that are likely to alter the attitudes of neither side …
will have no bearing on the disagreement in attitude, with which both
parties are primarily concerned” (1948b, 4–5; see also 1944, 14).
Second, disagreement in attitude determines when an ethical problem is
resolved:

If the men come to agree in belief about all the factual matters
they have considered, and if they continue to have divergent aims in
spite of this … they will still have an ethical issue that is
unresolved. But if they come to agree [in attitude], they will have
brought their ethical issue to an end; and this will be so even though
various beliefs … still remain debatable. Both men may conclude
that these remaining beliefs, no matter how they are later settled,
will have no decisive effect on their attitudes. (1944, 14–15;
see also 1948b, 6)

This triumvirate—that beliefs and attitudes are different yet
causally related, that moral disagreement essentially involves
disagreement in attitude, and that moral disagreement also typically
involves disagreement in belief—provides much of the leverage for
the remainder of Stevenson's full-blown ethical theory involving moral
language and methodology and provides the grounds for insisting that
ethical inquiry cannot be a science. For this package of views
together inform his conclusions about the nature of and differences
between ethical and scientific problems, functions,
language, and methods. Ethical problems,
according to Stevenson, are constituted at least in part by
disagreement in attitude, while scientific problems are constituted
only by disagreement in belief; hence, the function of ethical inquiry
is at least in part to coordinate or settle attitudes, while the
function of scientific inquiry is to coordinate or settle only
beliefs. Ethical language, then, must have features,
namely, emotive meaning
(Section 3.3),
that make it
apt for coordinating attitudes, while scientific language need only
have features, namely, descriptive meaning
(Section 3.3)
that make it
apt for coordinating beliefs. Finally, the linguistic methods for
resolving ethical disputes must be grounded at least in part by the
relations among beliefs and attitudes, while those for resolving
scientific disputes need be guided only by the relations among
beliefs. For these reasons, ethics is not—and cannot
be—a science:

(S)cientific methods cannot guarantee the definite role in the
so-called normative sciences that they may have in the natural
sciences. Apart from a heuristic assumption to the contrary, it
is possible that the growth of scientific knowledge may leave many
disputes about values permanently unsolved. … For the same
reason I conclude that normative ethics is not a branch of any
science. It deliberately deals with a type of disagreement that
science deliberately avoids. … Insofar as normative ethics
draws from the sciences, in order to change attitudes via
changing people's beliefs, it draws from all the
sciences; but a moralist's peculiar aim—that of
redirecting attitudes—is a type of activity, rather than
knowledge, and falls within no science. Science may study that
activity and may help indirectly to forward it; but it is not
identical with that activity. (1948b, 7–8)

For Stevenson, language is an instrument or tool for serving certain
purposes; ethical language is thus suited especially for the central
purposes of ethics. Since the central purposes of ethics are to
resolve or coordinate attitudes, an analysis of ethical language must
reveal how ethical language serves these dynamic purposes. It
does so, according to Stevenson, by having emotive meaning in addition
to descriptive meaning, where meaning is to be cashed out in
“pragmatic” or dispositional terms as a network of causal relations
that obtain between language and psychology.

Stevenson intends to provide a theory of emotive and descriptive
meaning in the “pragmatic” or “psychological” sense, where this sense
of ‘meaning’ invokes the work of Charles Morris. In
Foundations of the Theory of Signs (1938), Morris had
suggested a tripartite division of the study of signs into (i) syntax,
the study of the relations among signs; (ii) semantics, the study of
the relations among signs and their designations or denotations; and
(iii) pragmatics, the study of signs as they are used by members of a
community in order to “meet more satisfactorily their individual and
common needs” (10), that is, the study of signs as they are used to
coordinate mental and social life. Taking this cue from Morris,
Stevenson seeks to provide a theory of meaning in terms of the
“psychological reactions” of those who use the signs (1944, 42), and,
then, to distinguish emotive and descriptive meaning by the different
types of psychological reaction associated with the use of emotive and
descriptive language respectively.

According to Stevenson, explaining emotive and descriptive meaning in
this psychological sense of ‘meaning’ would be promising if it did not
encounter an immediate problem that “has long been one of the most
troublesome aspects of linguistic theory” (1944, 42; 1937, 20).
The problem, as Stevenson saw it, is that the meaning of an expression
must be relatively stable across a variety of social and linguistic
contexts, lest the expression be unhelpful to our understanding of the
many contexts in which the expression is used; however, the
psychological states associated with an expression vary widely across
social and linguistic contexts. At a football game, for example,
‘Hooray!’ may be shouted in connection with terrific excitement, but at
other times with little emotion at all; likewise, to a postmaster who
regularly sorts the mail, “‘Connecticut’ may cause only a toss of the
hand, but for an old resident it may bring a train of reminiscences”
(1944, 43). Similarly, the sentence ‘This legislation is just’
may be used to express a favorable attitude towards a particular piece
of legislation, but not when embedded within the more complex sentence
‘Vote for this legislation only if it is just’. Thus,

Some variation (of psychological states) must of course be allowed,
else we shall end with a fictitious entity, serene and thoroughly
useless amid the complexities of actual practice; but
‘meaning’ is a term wanted for marking off something
relatively constant amid these complexities, not merely for paying
them deference. A sense is needed where a sign may ‘mean’
less than it ‘suggests’—a sense in which meanings
are helpful to the understanding of many contexts, not some
vagrant sense in which a word has a wholly different
‘meaning’ every time it is used. (1944, 43)

Stevenson's task, then, is to provide a psychological theory of meaning
according to which the psychological states associated with an
expression's use, and hence an expression's meaning, remains relatively
constant across contexts.

Stevenson's solution to this problem of flux is to provide a
dispositional theory of meaning grounded in the causal-historical
relations between a sign and the psychological states of those within
a linguistic community who have used and reacted, and continue to use
and react, to the sign. Thus, Stevenson's is not a
“use,” “tool,” or “instrumental”
theory of meaning, for a sign's meaning is not constituted by its use
on an occasion of utterance. Rather, a sign's meaning is constituted
by its power—its “tendency,”
“potentiality,” “latent ability,” or
“disposition” (1937, 20–22; 1944, 46; 1948a,
158)—to evoke the psychological states of a hearer or to be used
to express those of a speaker. The “power” of an
expression, like the purchasing “power” of a dollar, or
the stimulating “power” of coffee, is to be understood not
as some mysterious entity or force, but rather as a complex network of
causal relations:

The word ‘disposition’ …, is useful in dealing with
complicated causal situations, where some specified sort of
event is a function of many variables. To illustrate
… Although coffee often ‘causes’ stimulation, it is never
the only cause. The degree of stimulation will depend as well on
many other factors—the initial state of a man's fatigue, the
absorptive state of his stomach, the constitution of his nervous
system, and so on. (1944, 46)

Just as the stimulating power of coffee remains relatively unchanged
despite varied reactions or responses to the ingestion of coffee, so
too does the meaning of an expression remain relatively unchanged
despite varied psychological states resulting from or leading to the
articulation of an expression (1944, 46–47).

A closer look at Stevenson's notion of dispositions might be
helpful. A disposition, on Stevenson's account, is a complex
causal network consisting of (i) stimuli, (ii) responses, (iii)
contextual or “attendant” circumstances of the stimuli, which are
subject to occasional or even frequent change, and (iv) the “bases” of
the disposition, which are the set of circumstances that are subject to
much less frequent change. Considering again Stevenson's own
example, the stimulating power of coffee is a disposition constituted
by a complex causal network consisting of: stimuli, such as the
variable amounts of coffee ingested; and responses, such as the
resulting changes in energy, attention, anxiety, or irritation.
These stimuli and responses are mediated by: attendant circumstances,
such as a drinker's fatigue at the time of ingestion, the absorptive
rate of her stomach, or the constitution of her nervous system; and the
basis of the disposition, such as the chemical composition of the
coffee or the soil conditions where it was grown. The responses,
then, are a function of the stimuli, attendant circumstances, and
basis, and one who specifies these and who specifies in detail their
correlation “has said all about the disposition that there is to say”
(1944, 51).

Analogously, the meaning of a sentence, such as ‘Hooray’, is
constituted in part by a complex causal network of: stimuli, such as
the spoken or written tokens of ‘Hooray!’; and responses, such as
excitement, affection, or possibly even annoyance. These are
mediated by: attendant circumstances, such the time, location, or
sociological context (e.g., whether the person uttering ‘Hooray!’ is a
fellow fan or rival) of the utterance; and the basis of the
disposition. The basis of a sign's disposition is a notion that
is especially underdeveloped in Stevenson's work. He does say
that to count as meaningful, a sign's disposition must have been caused
by, and would not have developed without, an “elaborate process of
conditioning which has attended the sign's use in communication” (1944,
57), a requirement necessary to distinguish linguistic meaning from
other general phenomena that might be said to have meaning in some very
broad sense, such as a cough that might be said to “mean” that a person
has a cold. Thus, for Stevenson, the linguistic meaning of a sign
is tied to linguistic conventions that have developed in light of the
history of a sign's use in a variety of situations. Perhaps this
qualification suggests that the basis of a sign's disposition is its
history of use in attendant circumstances within a linguistic
community.

In any case, in addition to the “active” disposition of a sign
to evoke particular psychological states of a hearer, the
meaning of a sign is also constituted in part by a “passive”
disposition to be used to express the psychological states of
a speaker (1944, 57–58). The essential difference between these
dispositions is that the kinds of stimuli and responses are
“reversed.” In the case of a sign's active disposition, the
stimuli are the token productions of the sign, while the responses are
the psychological states of a hearer; however, in the case of a sign's
passive disposition, the stimuli are psychological states of a person,
the responses the token productions of the sign. Thus, for
Stevenson, the meaning of a term is the “conjunction” or union of two
dispositions, one “active” disposition to evoke psychological states of
a hearer, another “passive” disposition to be used to express the
psychological states of a speaker, where a disposition is a complex
causal network of stimuli, responses, attendant circumstances, and
basis. Stevenson warns that his account of meaning, understood in
causal-dispositional terms, should not be taken as anything close to a
complete theory of meaning, but only the detailed outlines of one that
must be extraordinarily complex (EL, 58).

For Stevenson, the meaning of a sign is a complex dispositional
property. Consequently, since the sentences of a language have
distinguishable kinds of dispositions, they have distinguishable kinds
of meaning.

The emotive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates the sign
to a range of attitudes (1944, 59–60). From a hearer or reader's
point of view, feelings or attitudes are the responses, tokens of the
sign are the stimuli; from a speaker or writer's point of view,
attitudes are the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses.
An attitude is itself a disposition whose stimuli and responses relate
to “hindering or assisting” the object of the attitude, that which one
is for or against (1944, 60). As a disposition, the emotive
meaning of a sign remains relatively stable, though responses may vary
across contexts given different attendant, or contextual, circumstances
(1944, 60). Thus, a speaker's utterance of “Hooray!” may be
occasioned by excitement or, on rare occasion, even indifference; but
the disposition of the sign to be used to express or to evoke these
varying attitudes remains relatively stable, its stability a result of
an “elaborate process of conditioning” that gives rise to linguistic
conventions (1944, 60–62). Emotive meaning, for Stevenson, is not
a degenerate kind of meaning, as is sometimes thought to be the
conclusion of some Logical Positivists, such as Ayer (1936).
Rather, Stevenson is among the group of philosophers, linguists,
critical and value theorists, such as Richards (1924, 1926, and with
Ogden 1922) and Perry (1926), who seek to re-establish, in an era of
scientific enthusiasm, the importance of emotive language and meaning
for coordinating mental and social life:

It may be well to guard against the tendency, too common among
popular writers, to separate meanings into the sheep and the goats—a
procedure which militates against detachment, and hides the need for a
more detailed classification (of meaningful language)…. In
particular, the term ‘emotive’ is sometimes used in an extremely rough
way, until it labels a wastebasket for the many aspects of linguistic
usage that are detrimental or irrelevant to the purposes of
science. … (This) usage is not at all fortunate when it
leads one to suppose, as it too readily does, that any expression
classifiable as emotive is thereby perfectly put in its place,
requiring no further attention. (1944, 76–77)

The descriptive meaning of a sign is a disposition that relates the
sign to a range of “cognitive” states, including belief, supposition,
presumption, etc. From a hearer or reader's point of view,
cognitive states are the responses, tokens of the sign are the
stimuli. From a speaker or writer's point of view, cognitive
states are the stimuli, tokens of the sign are the responses.
Cognitive states, like attitudes, are complex dispositions.

Indeed, according to Stevenson, cognitive states and attitudes are
dispositions so complex that he can give no precise account of
them. He does, however, try to clarify by analogy the complexity
with which cognition and attitudes are linked to action. Consider
a small ball of iron surrounded by magnets, each with its own
disposition to affect the ball:

The current is switched on, and the ball moves in a certain
way. Now each of the magnets has a disposition to affect the
motion of the ball, but the actual motion of it cannot be related to
one of these dispositions alone; it must be related to all.
Change any of the magnets, and, all else remaining constant, the motion
of the ball will change as well. In spite of many differences,
this case parallels the one in question. Several dispositional
properties are present together, each making a difference to the way
any other is realized. … There is clearly nothing mysterious
about such a situation. The term ‘disposition’ is used, as
always, to refer to a complicated milieu in which a given sort of event
has many causes. Here the situation is complicated enough to
require the mention of several dispositions. … It is after
this fashion, perhaps, that cognition must be conceived—as a
disposition whose response is modified by that of many other
dispositions. (1944, 65–66)

The emotive and descriptive meanings of signs are related in a
variety of ways. Signs may have both emotive and descriptive
meaning, and often do. Perhaps a noncontroversial example
is the sentence ‘That was courageous’, whose descriptive meaning
relates tokens of the sentence to cognitive states that, in some way,
represent the action referred to as one performed in spite of an
actor's fear, and whose emotive meaning relates tokens of the sentence
to favorable states, such as admiration towards the action or
actor. According to Stevenson, almost all words in a natural
language have both emotive and descriptive meaning owing to their
historical uses in emotional contexts (1944, 71). The interplay
of emotive and descriptive meaning also affects the development and
evolution of sign's meaning, a result of the relative independence of
the two kinds of meaning. Stevenson suggests, for example, that
the word ‘democracy’ may have come to possess its laudatory emotive
meaning in America because the word refers, via its descriptive
meaning, to properties of government that Americans favored. But
now:

Suppose, for example, that a group of people should come to
disapprove of certain aspects of democracy, but continue to approve of
other aspects of it. They might leave the descriptive meaning of
‘democracy’ unchanged, and gradually let it acquire, for
their usage, a much less laudatory emotive meaning. On the other hand,
they might keep the strong laudatory meaning unchanged, and let
‘democracy’ acquire a descriptive sense which made
reference only to those aspects of democracy (in the older sense)
which they favored. It is often essential, if failures in
communication are to be avoided, to determine which of these changes
is taking place; and the distinction between emotive and descriptive
meaning is of great use in studying the matter. (1944, 72)

Emotive and descriptive meaning can thus be independent to varying
degrees. Consequently, one kind of meaning can survive change or even
disappearance of the other. The independence of the emotive meaning of
a sign can be roughly tested by comparing the meaning of a sign with
that of a sign that is a descriptive, but not an emotive,
synonym. (Stevenson holds that signs rarely, if ever, have emotive
synonyms given their respective “emotional histories”
(1944, 82).) Thus, to whatever extent the laudatory strength of
‘democracy’ exceeds that of ‘government where rule
is by popular vote’, the emotive meaning of the former will be
independent of the latter (1944, 73).

Ethical language should be suitable for the purposes of
ethics. Since, for Stevenson, the purposes of ethics are to settle,
coordinate, or otherwise resolve disagreements in attitude, an
analysis of ethical language must display how ethical language is apt
for performing these functions. It is apt, according to Stevenson,
because ethical language (i) almost always has both emotive and
descriptive meaning, where (ii) emotive meaning is essential and (iii)
often strongly independent of descriptive meaning (in the sense in
which “thin” ethical terms, such as ‘good’,
might be said to have emotive meaning that is strongly independent of
any descriptive meaning it might have). That ethical language has
essential emotive meaning—that is, has dispositions in which
attitudes play a most prominent role—implies as it should that
attitudes and feelings are at issue in cases of moral disagreement or
uncertainty. That ethical language usually has both emotive and
descriptive meanings which often interact in various ways suggests as
it should that beliefs, and therefore rational methods, can be
relevant to resolving moral disagreement or uncertainty. That emotive
meaning is often strongly independent of descriptive meaning suggests
as it should that nonrational “persuasive” methods can
also play a role in settling or resolving moral disagreement or
uncertainty.

Stevenson aims to clarify ethical language by using
“tools” of analysis. One tool that Stevenson will
not use to clarify ethical language is the tool of
definition, at least in the sense of ‘definition’ that
implies “finding synonym for synonym,” since he thinks
that ethical terms, due to their emotive meanings, are indefinable in
this sense (1944, 82). Rather, Stevenson's analytic tool of choice is
a set of models. The models highlight the respective dispositional
elements (i.e. elements of meaning) of ethical language that, via its
use, are to varying degrees in linguistic play (1944,
82–83).

Two such models, labled ‘(P1)’ and
‘(P4)’ below, receive a great deal of
Stevenson's attention, because they paradigmatically exemplify for the
sentence ‘This is good’ what Stevenson calls respectively
his “First Pattern” and “Second Pattern” of
analysis. These patterns and, hence, (P1) and
(P4) differ most importantly in descriptive richness and
emotive force. (P1)'s descriptive content is scant,
conveying only information about the speaker's attitude and,
therefore, conveying only somewhat more information than is conveyed
by (P1)'s relatively strong emotive element; therefore,
(P1) well-models those uses of an ethical sentence at which
front and center is a speaker's attitude. (P4)'s
descriptive content conveys more complex, precise information about
the qualities of which the speaker approves and merely characterizes
‘This is good’ as conveying emotive force; therefore,
(P4) well-models those uses of an ethical sentence at which
front and center are a speaker's moral standards.

As models, (P1) and (P4) have different
strengths and weaknesses, and while discussing them Stevenson suggests
or implies several other models:
(P2a)-(P3c). Like (P1),
(P2a)-(P2c) exemplify Stevenson's First Pattern
of Analysis, and, like (P4),
(P3a)-(P3c) exemplify Stevenson's Second Pattern
of Analysis. Notice that each subset of models, and each model within
each subset, is listed roughly in order of increasing descriptive
richness and decreasing emotive force.

Discussion begins with (P1), returning later to (P0a)–(P0d).

‘This is good’ means:

(P0a)

Approve of this!

(P0b)

Let's all approve of
this!

(P0c)

Hooray for
this!

(P0d)

Hooray for this for
being X, Y, and Z!

(P1)

I approve of this; do so
as well.

(P2a)

I approve of this;
let's all do so!

(P2b)

I approve of this;
hooray for this!

(P2c)

I approve of this; how
I wish we would all do so!

(P3a)

This is X;
hooray for this!

(P3b)

This is X;
hooray for things that are X!

(P3c)

This
is X, Y, and Z; hooray for things that
are X, Y, and Z!

(P4)

This
is X, Y, and Z [“except that
‘good’ has as well a laudatory emotive meaning which
permits it to express the speaker's approval and tends to evoke the
approval of the hearer”]

Model (P1) contains two sentences each of a different mood:
‘I approve of this’, a non-normative declarative sentence,
and ‘Do so as well’, a second-person imperative. As a
non-normative declarative sentence, ‘I approve of
X’ is passively disposed, Stevenson thinks, to be used
by a speaker or writer who believes the world is as described—in
this case, by a speaker or writer who believes that she approves of
that which is demonstrated by ‘this’—and is actively
disposed to evoke a similar belief or cognitive state in an audience
upon its being heard or read. Similarly, as a second-person imperative
sentence, ‘Do so as well’ is passively disposed, Stevenson
thinks, to be used by a speaker or writer who desires her audience
either to share her favorable attitude or to engage in the particular
kind of behavior demonstrated, and is actively disposed to effect that
particular attitude or behavior of a hearer or reader. Thus,
(P1) is intended to clarify the sense in which ethical
language dispositionally relates ethical terms to both attitudes and
beliefs, and thus, the sense in which ethical language has both
emotive and descriptive meaning. As a model, (P1) also
helps to clarify several other important features of ethical language.
For example: the descriptive sentence in (P1) has quite
narrow descriptive content, namely, that the speaker approves of the
particular object or act to which she is referring; the imperative
sentence has especially direct emotive force, strongly commanding
one's audience to have similar favorable attitudes; and both sentences
are, of course, about attitudes. Thus, (P1) is intended to
bring to light that ethical terms sometimes bring, or are brought,
into play by narrow descriptive content, as with many uses of
“thin” ethical terms like ‘good’,
right’, etc.—though also sometimes even by
“thick” ethical terms like ‘courage’ or
‘justice’; as Stevenson writes, “We all know that a
politician who promises ‘justice’ commits himself to very
little, unless he defines the term before the election” (1944,
35)—and sometimes have very direct emotive force, as when a
parent strongly intones to her child that she (the child) is to share
the parent's favorable attitude towards sharing with others. Also, by
forcing attitudes to center-stage, (P1) captures the
essential nature and organizational focus of moral problems as
described in Section 2.3. Finally,
because the descriptive content of the declarative is relativized to a
speaker, (P1) brings to the fore the speaker-relativity of
the descriptive meaning of ethical terms, a point to which Stevenson
returns on several occasions (e.g., 1944, 227–232).

Despite its usefulness, Stevenson's (P1) is not be taken as
some sort of “official” model of ethical sentences. It
might be tempting to do so, given that Stevenson devotes a great deal
of space in Ethics and Language discussing the various
features and implications of (P1). Despite the temptation,
Stevenson himself later came to regret putting (P1) front
and center, and this for two reasons. First, (P1) has the
implausible methodological implication that to fully justify a moral
claim, such as ‘This is good’, one must provide reasons
for believing that one approves of the object that
(P1) describes one as having (1963b, 210–212). Second
and more importantly, taking (P1) as a sort of
“official” model masks Stevenson's own sensitivity to the
myriad of ways in which (P1) is misleading or
otherwise defective. Five of (P1)'s misleading features are
as follows:

Problem 1:

The imperative is “too blunt and instrument” (1944,
32), evoking attitudes in a overly aggressive, crude way. Moral
claims, according to Stevenson, lead rather than command
people to alter their attitudes and, so, the force of the judgment
‘This is good’ “has been poorly approximated” by (P1) (1944,
32–33).

Problem 2:

The imperative suggests that the purpose of moral
deliberation and discussion is to convert others. Since the use
of a second-person imperative implies a position of authority over
one's audience, this model gives the impression that the speaker or
writer “wishes only to propagate his preconceived aims, without
reconsidering them” (1944, 32). However, most moral claims are
often occasioned not by a desire for “conquest,” but rather by a desire
for mutual understanding (1944, 32).

Problem 3:

The declarative suggests that the descriptive element
is often quite narrow and perhaps quite precise, when it point of fact
it is often quite broad or complex and quite vague (1944, 33–34 and
206–213).

Problem 4:

The declarative fails to model the possibility of
disagreement in belief, which intuitively is a part of many moral
disagreements. Suppose, for example, that Smith declares that
complimenting others is good, while Jones declares that complimenting
others is bad, and that their disagreement is grounded in the conflict
between Smith's belief that complimenting others generally leads to a
healthy degree of self-esteem and Jones's belief that complimenting
others too often leads to excessive pride. According to
(P1), the descriptive element of Smith's utterance is
rendered ‘I approve of complimenting others’, while Jones's utterance is
rendered ‘I disapprove of complimenting others’ (1944, 22). But
here, Smith and Jones disagree in belief not at all.

Problem 5:

The declarative implies, implausibly, that the full
justification of a moral claim always requires the provision of reasons
for believing that a speaker approves or disapproves of that
to which she refers (1963b, 210–212).

Models (P2a)–(P2c) rectify Problems 1 and
2 to some degree in several ways. First, each lessens the blunt force
and authoritativeness of the second-person imperative by using a more
interpersonally agreeable first-person plural imperative, exclamative,
and optative respectively. (P2a), because it retains an
imperative, models better than (P2b) and (P2c)
the dispositions of moral sentences to evoke an audience's attitudes
or behaviors. The latter two, containing instead an exclamative and
optative respectively, models better than (P2a) the
dispositions of moral sentences to express a speaker's attitudes,
though at the expense of evoking the audience's attitudes less
directly than (P2a). (P2b), given its
exclamative, which typically conveys an attitude more forcefully than
an optative (with the possible exception of regret), models even
better than (P2c) the disposition of moral sentences to
express a speaker's attitudes and, thereby, better models the
dispositions of moral sentences to evoke an audience's attitudes via
the “contagion of warmly expressed approval” (1944,
22). In the models to follow, an exclamative rather than an imperative
or optative is used to model the emotive features of ethical language.

Models (P3a)–(P3c) rectify Problems 3-5 to
some degree, while suggesting additional complexity in the emotive
element. Each suggests that the descriptive element in ethical
sentences is more complex and perhaps more vague, suggesting as they
do a more general description of an action, person, policy, etc. as
exemplifying certain characteristics or properties, rather than the
narrower and more precise description of a speaker as exemplifying a
specific attitude. Thus, each allows that moral disagreement may be
grounded in disagreement in belief—e.g., Smith and Jones can use
‘complimenting others is good’ and ‘complimenting
others is not good’ respectively as a means of disagreeing in
belief about whether complimenting others exemplifies property X (or Y
or Z)—and, thereby, eliminates the implication that fully
justifying a moral claim requires providing reasons for
believing that a speaker has the particular attitude she is
described as having. In addition, the exclamative in (P3a)
suggests that the disposition of ethical sentences relates ethical
terms in part to attitudes directed towards the object or
action at issue. The exclamatives in (P3b) and
(P3c), on the other hand, suggest that the dispositions of
ethical sentences relates ethical terms in part to attitudes directed
towards the characteristics or properties that an object or
action might exemplify.

Stevenson's (P4), has a descriptive element that is more
precise than (P3a)–(P3b). It also removes
even a model of the emotive element, leaving instead just a
characterization to the effect that some emotive element is
present. Thus, unlike (P0a)–(P1), which
place the dispositional relations between ethical terms and
attitudes—i.e., emotive meaning—front and center,
(P4) instead places front and center the dispositional
relations between ethical terms and beliefs—i.e., descriptive
meaning. (P4) thus captures the passive dispositions of
ethical terms to be used as a result of a speaker or writer's more
specific cognitive states about the properties or characteristics of
an action, person, etc, and the terms’ active dispositions to
cause such cognitive states in an audience. Perhaps the more
descriptive “thick” ethical terms, such as
‘cruel’, ‘kind’, or ‘courageous’
provide the best examples of terms that possess such dispositions,
though these may be evident even when reflecting on “thin”
ethical terms, such as ‘good’ or
‘right’. Consider, for example, an Aristotelian, Kantian,
and Millian individually deliberating over whether a particular action
or object is good, their respective deliberation and use of
‘This is good’ guided, as they would be, by their beliefs
about whether the action or object under discussion exemplifies the
promotion of a teleological end, a Good Will, or pleasure
respectively.

Returning to (P0a)–(P0d), these rectify to some
degree an additional problem, one that encumbers all of
(P1)–(P4).

Problem 6:

It is often simply too difficult to determine whether the
descriptive meaning of ethical language is strictly designated
or merely suggested (1944, 85–87).

The distinction between ‘strictly designates’ and ‘suggests’ is most
plausibly understood as invoking the distinction between semantics and
pragmatics, or the distinction between that which is conveyed as a
matter of convention or as a matter of conversational
dynamics:

The distinction which the question presupposes, that between what
‘good’ means and what it suggests, is
often beyond the precision of ordinary language. It is a distinction
between descriptive dispositions of the term, one of which is
preserved by linguistic rules and the other is not. In the rigorous
discourse of science or mathematics, which avails itself of
interrelated sets of definitions or formal postulates, the distinction
is readily made. In the rough contexts of daily life, however, a great
many rules are not stipulated, being imperfectly evident from people's
linguistic habits; and even those rules which are occasionally
stipulated are not constantly followed. Certain rules, of course,
are always observed; for ‘good’, whatever else,
is ‘not bad’ and ‘not indifferent’. But many
other rules remain as mere possibilities. If such a rule is
specifically called to a person's attention he may accept
it—though usually only temporarily, for a given purpose. Not
until a great many rules are permanently settled, though, do we get
beyond the undecided region that separates descriptive meaning from
suggestiveness. When rules are in the course of becoming
generally accepted, there is a long period over which we may either
accept or reject them without violence to conventional language. Our
decision may settle the matter for our own usage, and determine what
is afterward to be called the term's descriptive meaning, and
what is to be called its suggestiveness; but our finished product is
by no means the same as the raw material. (1944, 86; see also
1948a, 154–158; 1963b, 208–210)

Thus, Stevenson's distinction between ‘strictly designates’ and
‘suggests’ is plausibly captured by the later Gricean distinction
between that which is “said” or “conventionally implicated” on the one
hand, and that which is “conversationally implicated” on the other
(Grice 1975); or perhaps by the later Searlean distinction between that
which is conveyed via the performance of a “direct” assertive
illocutionary act on the one hand, and via an “indirect” assertive
illocutionary act on the other (Searle, 1975). Models
(P0a)–(P0d), then, are useful for reminding us
that the “strict” meaning of ethical terms may include only
its emotive meaning; if so, however, its descriptive meaning is
strongly suggested and, thus, always remains in linguistic play.

All of these specific models, (P0a)–(P4),
thus fall into two logical patterns:

‘This is good’ means:

(G1)

‘x is D; φ’

(G2)

‘φ’

where ‘x’ is to be instantiated by a term
denoting an action, person, policy, etc; ‘is D’
is to be replaced by a set of descriptive predicates; and
‘φ’ is to be either instantiated by an appropriate
exclamative, optative, or imperative sentence, or replaced by a
description of an emotive linguistic rule (as in
(P4)). Instantiations of (G1) will model: (i)
the dispositional relations that obtain between ethical sentences and
psychological states of belief and attitude; (ii) varying degrees of
descriptive precision; (iii) varying degrees of descriptive
complexity; (iv) speaker-relativity of descriptive meaning; (v)
varying degrees of emotive force or directness; and (vi) varying
objects of attitude, whether actions, persons, etc, or any properties
these may exemplify. Instantiations of (G2) will model (i),
(v), and (vi), and serve as a reminder that the descriptive meaning of
ethical language may be merely suggested by the use of ethical
sentences, rather than a part of their conventional meanings.

An ethical problem is essentially constituted by disagreement or
uncertainty in attitude, though it is often constituted by
disagreement or uncertainty in belief as well. Resolving an ethical
problem, therefore, requires coordinating attitudes, sometimes by
coordinating beliefs that causally affect those attitudes. Attitudes
may be coordinated by methods that do not involve the use of language;
physical force, bribery, and physical seduction are just a few
nonlinguistic means of shaping and coordinating attitudes. Stevenson,
however, is interested only in linguistic methods of
coordinating attitudes, about which at least two questions can be
distinguished: (i) How can language be used (and how
has it been used) to coordinate attitudes? and (ii) How
ought language be used to coordinate attitudes? The latter is
itself a normative question and thus falls outside the scope of
Stevenson's project. The former is a metaethical question and, thus,
is that which Stevenson is most keen to answer. Stevenson categorizes
linguistic methods of coordinating attitudes as either
“rational” or “nonrational.” Rational methods
seek to shape or coordinate attitudes by using language to produce
reasons; Stevenson thus calls the set of such methods, aptly enough,
“Reason.” Nonrational methods seek to shape or coordinate
attitudes by using language in ways other than the production of
reasons; Stevenson calls this set of methods
“Persuasion.”

A reason, for Stevenson, is “any statement about
any matter of fact which any speaker considers
likely to alter attitudes” (1944, 115). “Whether this
reason will in fact support or oppose the judgment will depend,”
Stevenson says, “on whether the hearer believes it, and upon
whether if he does, it will actually make a difference to his
attitudes; but it may conveniently be called a reason (though not
necessarily a ‘valid’ one) regardless of whether it is
accepted or not” (1944, 115). Thus, a reason is a statement
whose content, if believed, is causally relevant to altering
attitudes. About how beliefs may alter attitudes Stevenson
cannot be precise, given the complexity of the phenomena. He does
provide a very general explanation, namely, that beliefs serve as
“intermediaries” between attitudes, strengthening or
weakening them by “disclosing new objects of favor or disfavor,
in such a way that several attitudes act concurrently, with a mutual
modification of them all” (1944, 115; also see especially 1950,
63–70).

Although this explanation is quite general, Stevenson provides a
plethora of examples throughout his work to clarify the variety of ways
in which beliefs, in their intermediary roles, may serve to strengthen
or weaken attitudes (1944, especially Chapters, V, VI, VIII). The
examples are divided into those in which beliefs can alter attitudes by
being logically related to other beliefs and by being
psychologically related to other beliefs. Consider
examples of the former kind in which reasons are deductively related to
other beliefs in the sense that they call into question the truth of
one's judgments. Suppose that Smith disapproves of policies that
would weaken a person's sense of independence, but nevertheless claims
that providing for unemployment payments would be a good policy (1944,
115–116). Assuming model (P1),
Smith's claim is akin the claim “I approve of this policy; do so as
well.” In such a case, Jones might try to alter, or call into
question, Smith's judgment that the policy is good by establishing the
intermediary belief that receiving unemployment payments would weaken a
person's sense of independence. In this case, Jones introduces an
intermediary belief that is likely to cause in Smith the belief ‘I
disapprove of this policy’, which logically contradicts Smith's
original belief (according to (P1)). Similarly,
assuming model (P3a), Smith's judgment is akin to the
claim “This policy (of receiving unemployment benefits) will not weaken
a person's sense of independence; hooray for this policy.” Again,
Jones might try to alter, or call into question, Smith's judgment that
the policy is good by establishing the intermediary, and logically
contradictory, belief that receiving unemployment payments would weaken
a person's sense of independence. In either case, Smith may alter
her attitudes toward unemployment insurance and, hence, her judgment
about the policy. As a second example, consider a person
A who claims that “it is always wrong to break a promise,”
though B points out to A that “there are many cases
of that sort which you regard without the least disapproval”:

B's reply is an empirical assertion, but note that it contradicts
A's judgment (by the first pattern only, of course) and so is logically
related to it. A must, in the interest of consistency, either
reject B's assertion, or give up his ethical judgment [i.e., modify his
attitude]. (He would be very likely to qualify his judgment,
saying merely that most instances of breaking promises are wrong.)
(1944, 116)

Stevenson also identifies a number of ways that reasons can shape
attitudes in virtue of being psychologically related to others'
beliefs. Consider, for example, cases in which reasons are
offered pertaining to the consequences or nature of a proposed tax bill
(1944, 118–119). One might try, for example, to mold an
unfavorable attitude towards the bill by proffering as a reason to
oppose it that “it will put a great burden on the poor, and make little
difference to the rich” (1944, 119). In this case, the speaker
uses as a reason to oppose the bill consequences towards which one is
likely to disapprove. (This example is closely related to the
previous example, but it does not directly call into question the truth
of a belief someone already has.) Stevenson identifies other ways
that reasons can be psychologically related to a person's other beliefs
or attitudes. Consider, for example, reasons that appeal to
intentions, origin, or authority. Smith mentions that another's
actions towards an elder friend “is admirable,” but Jones points out
that those actions are performed with the intention of getting the
elder's inheritance; in this case, Jones makes a claim about the
person's intentions or motives, towards which she believes Smith will
have an unfavorable attitude and, thereby, will alter Smith's
admiration (1944, 121). Or perhaps Jones points out that the
general disapproval towards extramarital intercourse arose historically
because of admirable attitudes towards a stable family life for
children, but that such an origin no longer fits with current
circumstances that provide for widespread, effective birth control
(1944, 123). In this case, Jones seeks to affect Smith's attitude
towards extramarital intercourse by pointing out the origin of that
attitude and contrasting it with present circumstances. Or
consider a person who tries to shape attitudes by invoking an
authority. For example, Jones claims that our schools ought to
emphasize the humanities because “‘To seek utility everywhere is
entirely unsuited to men that are great-souled and free’ as Aristotle
so wisely says” (1944, 125). In this case, Jones seeks to mold
Smith's attitude towards favoring the promotion of the humanities by
leveraging the extent to which Smith respects Aristotle as an authority
on educational matters.

Thus, ethical inquiry and deliberation often proceeds rationally by
presenting reasons to be for or against something,
reasons whose effectiveness is tied to their logical or psychological
relation to others' beliefs.

Not all linguistic attempts to coordinate or settle attitudes are
rational. Often, according to Stevenson, we attempt to mold
attitudes by linguistic means other than the presentation of reasons. For
example, we often attempt to affect or coordinate attitudes merely by
invoking or stressing the purely emotive element of words, or perhaps
by using metaphor, intonation, pleasantness of speech or rhythm, and
the like. These are all nonrational, but still linguistic,
methods of settling and coordinating attitudes that Stevenson calls
“Persuasion”:

The most important of the nonrational methods will be called
‘persuasive’ in a somewhat broad sense. It depends on the sheer,
direct emotional impact of words—on emotive meaning, rhetorical
cadence, apt metaphor, stentorian, stimulating, or pleading tones of
voice, dramatic gestures, care in establishing rapport with
the hearer or audience, and so on. … A redirection of the
hearer's attitudes is sought not by the mediating step of altering his
beliefs, but by exhortation, whether obvious or subtle, crude
or refined. (1944, 139)

Consider as the first of several examples the many uses of thick
ethical terms, such as ‘courageous’ or
‘democratic’. Often, we try to coordinate attitudes by
invoking these words more for their emotive meanings than for their
descriptive, especially when the descriptive meanings are taken for
granted. Saying that one acted in the face of fear may be
descriptively accurate; saying that one acted courageously, especially
when all relevant parties already believe that one acted in the face
of fear, is more likely an attempt to coordinate admiration among the
parties. Consider also the persuasive strategy of repetition,
especially when terms are used repeatedly in question begging
form. Smith says that Jones did the right thing; asked for a reason,
Smith merely states that Jones's act was an instance of performing his
duty, or that Jones had an obligation to do it. Here, Smith provides
no reason at all, but merely attempts to coordinate positive attitudes
by relying on the repeated effect of the emotive force of evaluative
terms. For a different use of repetition, consider the persuasiveness
of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s repetition of ‘I have a
dream’ and ‘Let freedom ring’ during his “I
Have a Dream” speech, delivered during the 1963 March on
Washington. No doubt, Dr. King's speech was intended to shape
attitudes in part by specifying various kinds of injustices, that is,
by proffering reasons that, it was to be hoped, clashed logically with
others’ beliefs about the extension of freedom and equality; but
the impact of Dr. King's speech continues to be the persuasive,
emotive power of his words and their delivery, including the
linguistic technique of repetition. For a wildly different example of
persuasion, consider the power wielded by Jim Jones, who was so adept
at building rapport with his followers that he was able to coordinate,
through speech, the agreement among hundreds of followers to commit
suicide in protest “of an inhumane world” (Jones et
al. 1978). These are just a few examples in which persuasive
linguistic methods are used to shape and coordinate moral thought and,
thereby, to resolve moral disagreement.

Persuasive techniques, according to Stevenson, play a vital role in
attempts to modify the standards of a society or group. At the
center of such reform is the use of what Stevenson calls “persuasive
definition,” or attempts to give “a new conceptual meaning to a
familiar word without substantially changing its emotive meaning, and
which is used with the conscious or unconscious purpose of changing, by
this means, the direction of people's interests” (1938b, 32).
Suppose Smith recognizes that Jones has had little formal education and
uses grammatically incorrect sentences and obvious literary references
and, on this basis, claims that Jones is simply not a person of
“culture.” Rodriguez agrees that Jones has such qualities but
claims that Jones is a person of culture notwithstanding, for “in the
true and full sense of the term, ‘culture’ means imaginative
sensitivity and originality,” and these qualities Jones
has in abundance:

It will be obvious that [Rodriguez], in defining
‘culture’, was not simply introducing a convenient
abbreviation, nor was he seeking to clarify ‘the’ common
meaning of the term. His purpose was to redirect [Smith's] attitudes,
feeling that [Smith] was insufficiently appreciative of their friend's
merits. ‘Culture’ had and would continue to have, for
people of their sort, a laudatory emotive meaning. The definition
urged [Smith] to stop using the laudatory term to refer to grammatical
niceties, literary allusions, and the rest, and to use it, instead, to
refer to imaginative sensitivity and originality. In this manner, it
sought to place the former qualities in a relatively poor light, and
the latter in a fine one, and thus to redirect [Smith's]
admiration. When people learn to call something by a name rich in
emotive meaning, they more readily admire it; and when they learn not
to call it by such a name, they less readily admire it. The definition
made use of this fact. It sought to change attitudes by changing
names. (1944, 211–212; see also 1938b)

It is also possible to persuasively change the emotive meaning of
a term while retaining its descriptive meaning. Stevenson calls such
attempts persuasive “quasi-definitions,” since he wants to
reserve ‘definition’ for a statement of a word's
descriptive meaning only. Consider, for example, Simon Blackburn's
recent explicit attempt to persuasively quasi-define
‘lust’ (2004). Lust is not a sin, suggests Blackburn, but
rather a “delight of the mind”:

(Lust) is not merely useful but essential. We would none of
us be here without it. So the task I set myself is to clean off
some of the mud, to rescue it from the echoing denunciations of old men
of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessors of
Rome, and the disgust of the Renaissance, to destroy the stocks and
pillories of the Puritans, to separate it from the other things that we
know drag it down … and so to lift it from the category of sin
to that of virtue. (2004, 3)

Persuasive definitions and quasi-definitions, then, lie at the
heart of much moral reform, whether for good or ill (1944,
209–210). “The words are prizes,” Stevenson writes,
“which each man seeks to bestow on the qualities of his own
choice” (1938b, 35).

At least nine objections have been leveled against Stevenson's
emotivism over the years, some of which were first articulated by Brand
Blanshard (1949). The objections fall within two categories, one
related to Stevenson's theory of moral psychology, the other to his
theory of moral language. Though most of these objections
ultimately miss their mark against Stevenson, several serious
objections remain, including what is described below as the Objection
from Motivational Judgment Internalism, the Frege-Geach Objection, and
the Objection from a Dispositional Theory of Meaning.

Stevenson holds that moral judgments or thoughts are essentially
constituted at least in part by affective attitudes, feelings, or
interests, those mental states whose general character is to be
for or against something. In this section,
‘strong emotivism’ refers to this metaphysical view of moral
thought. Several objections to Stevenson's theory arise from
perceived implications of strong emotivism.

Objection from Moral Properties. According to this
objection, if strong emotivism is true, then an event (person, action,
policy, institution, etc.) is bad (good, evil, etc.) only if a person
has an unfavorable attitude towards that event; however, having such an
attitude (the objection goes) cannot be a necessary condition for an
event's being bad (good, evil, etc.). Consider, for example,
Blanshard's example in which a rabbit has been caught in a severe
hunting trap for several days, causing the rabbit unnecessary,
prolonged, and extreme agony (1949). According to Blanshard's
understanding of strong emotivism, until a person has an unfavorable
attitude towards such an event or state of affairs, the rabbit's being
in such agony would not be bad, for on this understanding of strong
emotivism, an event cannot be bad unless and until someone has a
negative attitude towards that event. Since (the objection
continues), this conclusion is absurd, Stevenson's theory of moral
thought must be false. However, this objection conflates
Stevenson's theory of moral thought with a theory of moral properties,
assuming as it does that having, for example, an unfavorable attitude
towards an event constitutes the badness of that event, at
least in part. But this is the kind of moral metaphysics that
Stevenson's theory is designed to avoid. According to Stevenson,
there is nothing that constitutes badness (or goodness, etc.), for on
Stevenson's view there are no such moral properties. Rather,
having a negative attitude towards an event constitutes in part the
thought that something is bad (good, etc), not badness
(goodness, etc.) itself.

Objection from Externalism.
Section 2.3
describes Stevenson's
“Internalist” argument for strong emotivism. Blanshard objects to
this argument for reasons similar to those discussed in that
section. Consider a person who thinks, with great contempt, that
unnecessary, prolonged, extreme agony is bad and claims repeatedly that it
is bad, still repeating the claim even a week later though fatigue has
dissipated all contempt:

When we repeat the remark that such suffering was a bad thing, the
feeling with which we made it last week may be at or near the vanishing
point, but if we were asked whether we meant to say what we did before,
we should certainly answer Yes. We should say that we made our
point with feeling the first time and little or no feeling the second
time, but that it was the same point we were making. And if we
see that what we meant to say remains the same, while the feeling
varies from intensity to near zero, it is not the feeling that we
primarily meant to express. (1949, 45)

That is, it appears plausible that a person can think over time that a
certain event is bad, even though the attitude or feeling with which
one judged the event as bad has partially or even completely
dissipated over that time frame. However, were strong emotivism
true, such a thing would be impossible, and thus strong emotivism is
likely false. As discussed in
Section 2.3,
objections of this kind
provide one of the more serious challenges to Stevenson's emotivism.

Objection from Rational Irresolvability. According to
this objection, if strong emotivism is true, then there can be no
objective moral truth, no rational criticism of one's moral judgments,
no rationally resolvable moral disagreement. For according to
strong emotivism, the moral judgment that something is bad (good, etc)
just is in part having a negative attitude towards that thing, and
attitudes, feelings, or interests are not rationally governable.
This objection has a strong and a weak version. The strong
version argues that attitudes cannot be, and hence are never,
rationally governable. This objection misses its mark against
Stevenson, for as we saw in
Sections 2.2
and
4.2,
Stevenson goes to great lengths to show
how attitudes can be, and in fact often are, rationally governable (see
especially 1950, 63–70; 1961–62b). That is, attitudes can be and
often are settled, shaped, or coordinated by the presentation of
reasons that are logically or psychologically related by means of
intermediary beliefs. The weak version argues that attitudes, in
principle, may sometimes be rationally ungovernable. Stevenson
himself admits that this might be the case (e.g., 1944, 336). From
this admission, however, some have been tempted to argue for the next,
radically different, objection.

Objection from Moral Chaos. If attitudes may sometimes
be rationally ungovernable, then moral disagreement may sometimes be
rationally irresolvable. However, if moral disagreement may
sometimes be rationally irresolvable, then (this objection goes) moral
chaos is likely to ensue. Taking this objection to heart,
Blanshard goes as far as to claim that “[The general acceptance of
strong emotivism] would, so far as one can see, be an international
disaster” (1949). Stevenson could respond that even if the
possibility of rational irresolvability could lead to such chaos, such
an objection would not constitute a theoretical objection to his theory
of moral thought. That is, the objection does not imply that
Stevenson's theory of moral thought is false. Stevenson, however,
responds directly to the challenge, arguing that such an objection
arises from fear that cannot be assuaged by postulating some objective
truth or robust moral properties awaiting to be discovered (e.g., 1944,
336 and 1950, 68–70). Rather, such fear can be assuaged only when
we have a clear, realistic understanding of the nature and complexity
of moral disagreement and of the methods by which they can be, and
often are, resolved:

The present analysis can afford no assurance that dictators and
self-seeking politicians, whose skill in exhortation is so manifest,
‘inevitably must” fail, if left unopposed, in reshaping
moral codes to serve their narrow interests. … But this much
must be said: Those who cherish altruism, and look forward to a time
when a stable society will be governed by farsighted men, will serve
these ideals poorly by turning from present troubles to fancied
realms. For these ideals, like all other attitudes, are not imposed
upon human nature by esoteric forces; they are a part of human nature
itself. If they are to become a more integral part of it, they must be
fought for. They must be fought for with the words ‘right’
and ‘wrong’, else these attitude-molding weapons will be
left to the use of opponents. And they must be supported with
clear-minded reasons, else hypostatic obscurantism will bring
contempt to the cause it is intended to plead. (1944, 110; see
also 1961–62b)

Objections also arise from considerations of the view that moral
language is conventionally used at least in part to express or evoke
affective attitudes rather than or in addition to describing or
reporting.

Objection from Empty Expression. According to this objection,
if strong emotivism is true, then a speaker who utters, for example,
‘That's bad’ as a means of expressing her moral judgment,
but without having any negative attitude towards what is referred to,
has “expressed nothing.” Such an utterance is, says
Blanshard, “as empty as the word ‘Hurrah’ would be
when there was no enthusiasm behind it” (1949). This objection
fails to distinguish sincere from insincere speech acts. Consider, for
example, a speaker who knowingly lies by uttering the sentence
‘Smith is home’. Intuitively, the speaker has expressed
the belief that Smith is home, even though by hypothesis she lies and,
thus, fails to have that belief. The reason is that it is a plausible
condition of sincere assertion that a person who asserts that p
believe that p; but one could certainly assert that p without
believing that p. Analogously, a speaker who utters
‘Hurrah’ intuitively expresses enthusiasm, since it is a
plausible condition of sincere expression that a person who utters
‘Hurrah!’ be enthusiastic. But one could certainly utter
‘Hurrah!’ to express enthusiasm while remaining
unenthused. Likewise, Stevenson would respond, a speaker may be
unaffected and, thereby, insincere in uttering ‘That's
bad’, though she would still thereby express an unfavorable
attitude via her utterance.

Objections from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary
Conflation. Stevenson claims repeatedly that moral language is
used to express a speaker's attitudes or interests or to evoke or
otherwise shape the attitudes or interests of others. The Objection
from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary Conflation argues that these two
claims—that moral language is used to express the attitudes of
speakers, and that moral language is used to evoke or alter the
attitudes of an audience—conflate illocutionary acts and
perlocutionary intentions (e.g., Hare 1952 Section 1.7 and 1997
Sections 1–5–1.6; Urmson 1968). Illocutionary acts are the
acts that a speaker performs in uttering a sentence: warning,
advising, describing, directing or commanding, asking, expressing and
so on. Like sentences, illocutionary acts are subject to logical
constraints—it would be logically inconsistent, in some
intuitive sense, to direct one's hearer to both close and open a
particular window (‘Close that window and open that same
window’), for example, or to express both gratitude and
annoyance towards the cleaning of one's room (‘Thank you for
cleaning the room and shame on you for cleaning the room!’).
Since sentences and the illocutionary acts they are typically used to
perform have similar logical constraints, illocutionary acts may
plausibly be associated in some appropriate way with the semantics or
meanings of sentences. Now when a speaker performs an illocutionary
act in uttering a sentence, she often does so with particular
intentions or effects in mind. For example, knowing that her audience
often attempts to annoy her by doing the opposite of what she asks, a
speaker may utter ‘Keep the window closed’ with the
intention that her audience will in fact open the window. Thus, there
need be no logical inconsistency between directing one to
keep a particular window closed and an intention that the window be
opened. Thus, it is concluded, perlocutionary intention ought not be
associated with the semantics or meanings of sentences. The Objection
from Illocutionary/Perlocutionary Conflation, then, is that
Stevenson's theory of meaning incorporates that which is irrelevant to
semantics, namely perlocutionary intentions. This objection is related
to the next.

The Objection from Instrumentalism. Even if Stevenson's
claims about perlocutionary intentions are ignored, it remains
(according to this objection) that Stevenson's theory of meaning is,
at bottom, an instrumental or use theory of meaning, since it is a
theory that explains the meaning of moral sentences by appealing to
the illocutionary acts they are typically used to perform, that is, to
their typical illocutionary forces. However, a great many uses of
moral sentences fail to have such force. For example, when moral
sentence 1 is used in utterances of sentences 2 or 3, it is used
without its usual expressive force.

Insulting others is wrong.

If insulting others is wrong, I'll stop.

It is possible that insulting others is wrong.

Thus, the objection goes, Stevenson's theory of meaning leaves too
much unsaid about a great many uses of ethical language, and
consequently, is radically incomplete.

These last two objections are understandable, given how often Stevenson
appeals to the uses and purposes of moral language. Nevertheless,
they miss their mark, for Stevenson's theory of meaning is not a “use”
or “tool” theory of meaning, but rather a dispositional theory of
meaning
(Section 3.2; Urmson 1968, Ch. 4; Warnock 1978, Ch. 3).
Thus, Stevenson associates the meaning of a word or
sentence with neither perlocutionary intentions nor with illocutionary
force, but rather with the conjunction or union of its passive and
active dispositions—its passive dispositions to be used to
express a speaker's mental states and its active dispositions
to evoke mental states of a speaker's audience.

The Frege-Geach Objection. Because Stevenson's theory is
often thought to succumb to the Objection from Instrumentalism, it is
also thought to succumb to the Frege-Geach Objection, perhaps the most
pressing objection to any emotivist or expressivist theory of
meaning. This objection is so-called because Peter Geach (1958,
1960, 1965), relying on insights from Frege (e.g., 1918), argued
persuasively that a sentence's illocutionary force cannot constitute
its meaning. The strength of the Frege-Geach Objection arises
from the fact that natural languages are compositional and, thus, that
a minimal condition of adequacy on any semantic theory is that it
specify that which sentences contribute to the more complex sentences
into which they are embeddable. For example, a minimally adequate
semantic theory for English will entail that the meaning of sentence 1.
remains the same when it is embedded within sentences 2. or 3., since
an understanding of the latter sentences rests on an understanding of
their respective parts, including 1., and of the significance of the
way those parts are combined. However, since (it is thought)
Stevenson's theory of meaning holds that moral sentences are used to
express a speaker's attitudes—i.e., used with expressive illocutionary
force—and since moral sentences are often used as parts of more
complex sentences without such expressive force, as in sentences 2. and
3., Stevenson has failed to provide a minimally adequate theory of
meaning for moral sentences.

The Frege-Geach objection may ultimately undermine Stevenson's theory
of moral language, though not, as just discussed, because his theory
is a “use” or “tool” theory of meaning that
identifies a sentence's meaning with the illocutionary force of its
utterance or with the perlocutionary intentions of its
speaker. Associating a sentence's meaning instead with the set of its
passive and active dispositions, Stevenson's theory of meaning implies
that sentences will have relatively stable meanings across contexts of
use
(Sections 3.1
and
3.2),
and therefore, that
these dispositions might themselves be contributed to the more complex
sentences into which they embed. Precisely how Stevenson's
dispositional theory could be extended to account for compositionality
in this way is unclear, and Stevenson himself appears never to have
been sufficiently worried by the Frege-Geach objection to respond to
it. One idea would be that sentential operators, such as ‘if
… then’ and ‘it is possible that’ be treated as functions from
the dispositions of the component sentences to a resulting set of
dispositions, where the latter would constitute the meaning of the
complex sentence. Stevenson hints at such a possible extension of
his theory while discussing the compositionality of atomic
sentences:

No attempt has been made here to deal with one of the most difficult
problems that meaning-theory includes—that of explaining how
separate words, each one with its own meaning, can combine to yield
sentence-meanings. It is feasible, perhaps, to take each word as
having a disposition to affect cognition, just as the full sentence
does. The problem reduces, then, to one of explaining the interplay of
the dispositions of the several words, when realized conjointly. The
analogy of the magnets will still serve, used now to illustrate the
relationship of meanings rather than of beliefs. We
may compare the meaning of each word with the disposition of some one
of the magnets, and compare the meaning of the sentence with the
disposition that may be assigned to the group of magnets. Each word
has an independent meaning in the sense that if it is replaced by
certain others in any context, there will be a typical sort of
difference in the meaning of the context; but the precise way in which
the word's meaning is realized will depend on the meaning of the other
words that accompany it. (1944, 67)

Since Stevenson suggests that he might explain the compositionality of
atomic sentences in terms of functions from the dispositions of a
sentence's parts to a set of resulting dispositions, it is plausible
that he might also wish to extend his theory in a similar way to explain the
compositionality of complex sentences. Whether such a theory
could sustain additional scrutiny is debatable. For more in-depth
but accessible discussion of emotivist and expressivist attempts to
respond to the Frege-Geach Objection, see especially Schroeder 2008a
and 2008b and the entry on
moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism.

Objection from General Dispositional Theories.
Stevenson's is a dispositional theory of meaning. As explained
in
Section 2.2,
his
is also a dispositional theory of mental states. As such,
Stevenson's emotivism inherits challenges that accrue to most kinds of
dispositional theories. For an accessible discussion of the
merits and demerits of dispositional theories, see the entry on
dispositions.

Stevenson remains a central figure in current day metaethics, a
result of his development of at least four key ideas:

Progress in ethical theory begins by focusing in the first instance
on moral thought—on what it is to think that something is
good, bad, evil, etc.

Moral thoughts are essentially constituted at least in part by
attitudes or interests, that is, those feelings, attitudes, or other
affective states that are most closely related to motivation and
action, which can be generally characterized as states of being
for or being against.

Attitudes or interests can be, and often are, rationally
governable.

Moral sentences have both emotive and descriptive meaning.

These four ideas remain central to current day expressivists, such
as Blackburn (1984, 1993) and Gibbard (1990, 2003), whose work arises
especially from ideas 1–3. Indeed, the title of Gibbard 1990,
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, suggests all three ideas.
Current day hybrid expressivists, such as Stephen Barker (2002), Daniel
Boisvert (2008), David Copp (2001, 2009), and Michael Ridge (2006,
2007, 2014), hold that moral language is used conventionally to express both
beliefs and attitudes and, thereby, continue to develop in different
ways Stevenson's idea that moral sentences have both emotive and
descriptive meaning (Fletcher and Ridge 2014).